Highlights of 2011 part 2

This picture shows a couple of members of The Opera Group, with whom we collaborated on a project to take art out onto the streets and engage with people ahead of their performance at the CBSO concert hall of Seven Angels.

One of the great perks of volunteering for Birmingham Friends of the Earth is the opportunity to get a free ticket to a festival in return for working shifts on our property lockups. The money raised from this is the main reason we can afford to employ a member of staff working on campaigning for all the environmental changes we seek in Birmingham.

It may not be the most glamorous or fun part of campaigning, but responding to consultations is really essential to developing our reputation as a serious organisation whose views carry weight. As well as the core strategy, we have responded to various transport consultations, including on HS2 and aviation and the National Planning Policy Framework. Copies of these can be seen on our website.

The award that we got was largely for the work done by our Faith and Climate Change project, whose funding was unfortunately cut before we received this. There is work under way to develop an even bigger project building on the foundations created to do something across the whole region now.

We won photo of the year for this shot from last year's Santa Parade:

Richard made a totally original acceptance speech that I would love to see taken up by one of the winners at the Oscars next year!

Rossiter's and LOAF did us proud with the food and our volunteers cooked up a storm on the Barbecue for this annual fundraiser that also acts as an awareness-raising event for the benefits of organic food.

Over the summer, we took some time to pause on the active energy campaigning and have a look around the city at what is already happening in the city. We drew up 15 case studies and this information is now proving very useful as we battle cuts to renewable energy subsidies and support for our new campaigns.

In September, for In Town Without My Car Day, we did something practical this year. 5 "Bike Trains" converged on the centre of Birmingham with commuters heading to work. The atmosphere was great and we hope to have inspired a few people to repeat this in 2012. We'd like it to become a regular event to get people building up their confidence for cycling in Birmingham.

Of course, what made it the perfect start to the day was that after burning off all those calories cycling in to work, people were then given a free breakfast to give them the energy to get through to lunch courtesy of three lovely local independent coffee shops.

Elms Farm Excursion, Bank Holiday Monday 31 May

On Bank Holiday Monday 31 May a group of us from Birmingham went to Elms Farm, a biodynamic farm near Pershore, Worcestershire, as part of FOE's Fix the Food Chain campaign which forges links with local farmers.
Demeter is an organic standard dating back to the 1920s closely based upon the philosophies of Rudolf Steiner. Demeter follows a lunar calendar for planting, cultivating and harvesting with the aim of building a diverse ecosystem and becoming completely self reliant.
Elms Farm has been run since 2003 by Charbel Akiki who lives there with his wife Sussana and their four daughters. Charbel also shoulders a considerable amount of childcare while Sussana is at work in Birmingham.
I realised straight away I've met Charbel several times on his stall at Farmers Markets in Birmingham, so it was great to see from where his delicious salad leaves originate.
We began by attending Pershore's 'asparagus festival' which was a bit of a let down, I think we were too late for the asparagus, although there was some still on sale. We saw the parade through the town centre with lots of colourful floats, but I think most of us were more interested in the Farmers' Market. Like most of them in the UK, however, takeaway food and jars of preserves predominated.
Having scored our asparagus and, in Nigel's case, some serious quantities of seriously chocolaty cheesecake, we headed in the direction of the delightfully named North Piddle and Elms Farm. Many thanks to Nigel Baker, as I greatly enjoyed being chauffeured in his Toyota Prius, never having ridden in one before.
Sussana and Charbel welcomed us with a big pot of tea and we met a group from Worcester FOE who'd also come to see the farm. We soon got to know one another, chatting away and learning all about the intricacies of running a farm to Demeter standard, which is one of the most rigorous. Charbel and Sussana gave us some background on the farm, before we went on a tour.
First stop was the orchard, planted with the help of an agricultural college with some 600 fruit trees of some sixteen varieties of apples, pears, plums and cherries. Hens and Chickens were wandering around and live in a coops up in the orchard. Foxes are a serious problem, last year the farm lost around fifty birds. Cute and cuddly or a financial liability?
We then went on to look at the plantings of strawberries, three varieties; early, mid and late, the greenhouse with tomatoes, courgettes and those wonderful salad varieties planted out.
What struck me most seeing the farm is the way the crops co exist with the weeds, which grow all over the place and the sheer effort of maintaining the farm by hand. There's no tractor. It's easy to see how the price of Charbel's produce reflects the work which goes into it.
There's a beautiful meadow alongside full of tall grass and wild flowers, and Charbel described how nice it is for his children to enjoy. That's a good highpoint on which to conclude this report of our visit, and you can see some highlights on the video I made here.

Introducing Tom Pointon Birmingham FOE's new Outreach Officer

Eleanor Hoad gets to work on the Edible Erdington project

My name's Tom Pointon and I started as Birmingham FOE’s latest Outreach Officer at Birmingham FOE at the beginning of May.

So far I've been finding out whats going on in Ladywood and Handsworth, having decided to focus my energies on these areas.

I’ve always been interested in architecture, the quality of the built environment, how to make cities enjoyable places to live. I'm keen to enable and empower people on a local level to have more influence over the quality of their environment.

Last week I was at an estate in Ladywood, meeting the Ladywood Project, which offers space for residents on an estate of tower blocks, low-rise housing, to meet, share childcare, get advice on a range of issues, have a coffee. A centre like this is invaluable for many residents in these areas and it was good to chat with the staff and learn that play areas and green spaces were being used and enjoyed by people of all ages.

Last week I interviewed two people for the forthcoming show BFOE will be launching on Rhubarb Radio, the web radio station based in the Custard Factory. Firstly I spoke to Carol Byrne, who runs LOVE, the organic and local food stall at Birmingham Central Market, and then Eleanor Hoad, who has a twelve month contract as artist in residence based in Erdington.

These two are a source of great inspiration. Carol graduated in Film and has made a number of short documentaries, mainly about the land movements in Mexico. Inheriting her market stall after her dad passed away, she's built the business into her own vision, selling a range of seasonal, local and organic fresh produce. You can hear her interview soon on Rhubarb Radio.

Eleanor Hoad’s projects show a new direction for art and culture which had me pondering ‘how do we decide what constitutes Art?’ In much contemporary art what's significant isn't the work of art, but the ideas surrounding it. This found its ultimate expression in the art scene of the nineties, with over-inflated prices paid for items like sharks in tanks, unmade beds and so on. Its through art we reflect on ourselves and our place in the universe, ability to reflect what distinguishes us from other mammals. Anything can become an art work. It doesn't need to be something tangible and physical.

In 2005 Eleanor spent twelve months touring Birmingham in a van powered by recycled cooking oil, towing a solar powered caravan. She was inspired by the way the city is continually being knocked down and rebuilt. Calling this project ‘Brave New Brum’ each area she visited was invited to nominate Seven Wonders and Seven Blunders, to get people to think about the area where they live. The entire project culminated in a treasure hunt in Kings Norton

Eleanor then ran a year long Climate Change Awareness Project in Wythenshawe, Manchester which culminated in an environmental festival bringing people's attention to climate change in innovative ways. Many local people who were involved with the festival rely on nearby Manchester airport for their livelihoods, which apparently they regard as a mixed blessing.

Through the Brave New Brum project Eleanor got to know an NHS scheme called Food Net to get people eating more healthily and working with residents of a large housing estate in Kings Norton, she had an idea she describes as ‘The Scattered Orchard.’ Kicking off on with a Valentine's day event subsidized fruit trees were offered, with 100 fruit trees planted in a day across the estate. Eleanor created a large map of tree locations. This was repeated the following year, with participants reporting on how their trees were growing. The project was so successful it was followed up by a ‘Scattered Market Garden’ where subsidized seeds were offered, a map created to record where everything was planted.

This is where imagination comes in, being key to creativity, because Eleanor was able to inspire people to plant in innovative ways, using containers on limited spaces such as window sills or balconies of tower blocks. The scattered approach is highly appropriate for urban areas. I was in London at the weekend and traveling by bus across Hackney and Islington was struck at just how much green space there is, little pockets of land all over the place. In Birmingham the low value of land could become a strength. Instead of more office blocks and industrial estates sitting empty for years we could be turning old industrial areas to productive inner city grow sites. Instead of endless schemes ‘helping people back into work’ for non existent jobs, we could work now, making ourselves more self sufficient.

Eleanor is currently running the ‘Edible Erdington’ project. Every Monday on Erdington High Street, volunteers gather to tend two planters opposite the Coop now bursting with growing vegetables. Shes also building upon her ‘Prepare’ project. Last year she went round the Erdington area identifying fruit growing in all sorts of places which were not being harvested. Apple trees in back yards, elderflowers on waste land, pear trees growing on railway sidings. Fruit trees grow in all sorts of random areas in a city, often down to food waste, discarded apple cores and suchlike. All sorts of activities spun off from this project such as an Apple festival last year at which more than fifty examples of the truly astonishing variety of English apples were on show – all, amazingly enough, harvested, foraged in Erdington!

In April a Prepare Swap Shop took place at Birmingham museum and art gallery where people swapped produce made from the fruit: jams, pickles, juices. You can catch Eleanor’s contribution to ‘In Our Backyard’ the culmination of year long residencys of four Birmingham artists. Its in the Community Gallery of the Museum (entrance on Gt Charles Queensway) and runs until 4 July.

You’ll be able to hear the full interview with Eleanor on our forthcoming Rhubarb Radio show very soon, in the meantime get down to the Museum and Art Gallery Community Gallery and see In Our Backyard.

Bees - the new canaries

Over the years a few different animals and plants have been termed the new canaries in the coal mine for climate change and the ecological problems facing the world. Amphibians are at terrible risk of being wiped out, which could lead to huge increases in the numbers of insects and other problems. Coral-bleaching shows how much the oceans are warming and there is also evidence of how acidic they are becoming, with the real possibility that they could lose their ability to store carbon. Now though, it is the turn of the bees to become the symbol of environmental problems with a new film vanishing bees looking at the reasons for colony collapse disorder and warning of the consequences if nothing is done to save them.

On Wednesday a few of us from Birmingham Friends of the Earth went along to see the film at The Electric cinema and all of us certainly did come out thinking we wanted to do something - maybe put a hive on the roof of the Warehouse? Well, no that's probably not feasible, but definitely plant some bee-friendly stuff in the garden and maybe chuck a few seed bombs into the disused bulldozed sites of Digbeth.

While not as bleak as the Age of Stupid, the picture given in this film in the no-action-being-taken scenario, is also pretty worrying. The arguments for the importance of bees for all of us are pretty stark and cannot be ignored. The trouble is that neither this film nor any scientific study has provided conclusive proof of what is causing the bees to disappear. If you go expecting to get that, you'll be disappointed.

As a film, the vanishing of the bees has been described as "earnest", so I wasn't expecting it to be much more than informative, but there certainly were some interesting characters in the film and a few shocking facts - for example, the USA is now flying in bees from Australia to pollinate certain crops!!! It was also nice that there was a woman called Bee and a man called Dr Pollan in there who obviously belonged in their field.

The culprits are gradually revealed in the course of the documentary through interviews with bee-keepers, scientists and farmers. As an environmentalist they are pretty much what you'd expect; the use of certain pesticides, the use of intensive farming methods that have created huge monocultures rather than the biodiversity of mixed organic farming systems, loss of habitat and probably some of it is due to the industrialisation of bee-keeping itself. Many of these are also drivers of climate change and other problems associated with the ecology of our planet, so although the fate of bees is not necessarily directly linked to climate change, if we deal with one we will be helping to deal with the other, too.


I hadn't realised quite how much The Vanishing of the Bees would be about the USA, but that was primarily the focus, with only a minor mention of the UK. The fact is that we are the two countries mentioned who have not banned a certain Bayer pesticide with nicotinoids, which has been banned all over Europe where bee-keepers showed conclusive proof of what it was doing to bees (even Germany has banned it and Bayer is a German company!). I very much liked the French bee-keepers who took on the industrial giant and won, describing themselves as hippies who had been underestimated.

The American bee-keepers were interesting characters, but most of them work on such a massive industrial scale, taking their bees back and forth across the USA on lorries, that I kind of want that way of working to fail. There were a few small-scale bee-keepers and the ones who work locally with crops that flower at different times of the year seem to be doing much better.

Overall, it was certainly worth going to see, but the film was a bit over-long and could have been a bit bolder. For someone who didn't know about the topic at all, it would be very revealing, but for those with a reasonable amount of knowledge already, it did sometimes come over as a little patronising.

What is clear after seeing The Vanishing of the Bees, is that we must do something to change the destructive farming practices and have a new green revolution. This will help with food security both in terms of contributing fewer of the greenhouse gases that are causing climate change and in helping to protect bees who are vital for so much of the food we eat. This all ties in very well with our Fix the Food Chain campaign, so look here to see how you can help with that in Birmingham this weekend.

Joe Peacock

Organic BBQ on Saturday

Once again Birmingham Friends of the Earth will support the Anchor Inn’s annual Organic Beer Festival (23-27 July), which is now in its tenth year, by running an organic barbeque at the pub on Saturday 25^th July.

The Anchor, on Rea Street, Digbeth, made history ten years ago when it held the first organic beer festival in the UK and now the annual event is firmly established on the Midlands beer festival calendar.

The Birmingham Friends of the Earth’s annual barbecue has also become a tradition at the pub.

Organic meat and vegetarian burgers and sausages will be on offer in the pub’s beer garden at credit-crunch-busting prices supplied by Paul’s Soy Foods in Melton Mowbray and Rossiter’s Family Butchers in Selly Oak.

The issue of organic meat is more relevant than ever this year for Birmingham Friends of the Earth, who are putting pressure on local MPs to create planet-friendly farming through their “Fix the Food Chain” campaign. The campaign exposes the hidden chain stretching from intensive meat and dairy production in the UK to the forests of South America.

Organic beer?

If you look at the average pint of beer served up in the UK, it’s not so perfect. The hops used in the fermentation of beer are estimated to be sprayed up to 14 times each year with around 15 different pesticide products. In addition to this, countless additives are added to create the ‘perfect pint’, ensuring that it has a nice colour and flavour, a decent head and a profitable shelf life.

A big problem with this is that according to European legislation these additives, along with the other ingredients, do not need to be declared on the label unless the drink contains less 1.2% alcohol. Basically your pint has been chemically altered and you don’t know what you’re drinking. (1)

In contrast, organic beer is made in small batches from only organically grown barley, malt, wheat, hops, yeast and spring water. There are neither additives nor genetically-modified ingredients; everything grows as nature intended, giving a purer, more wholesome taste.

So please come and support us on the 25^th July for an organic barbeque and the beer festival will run from 23rd-27^th July http://www.anchorinndigbeth.co.uk/

(1) http://www.beerexpert.co.uk/organic-beer.html